What does rural mean in Orange County?

There are places where barns and livestock or narrow roads along open acres give way to a distinctively rural feel.

In Orange County, if you're talking about the West Windermere Rural Settlement, rural means old citrus groves blanketed in St. Augustine grass for gated subdivisions of big homes on big lots.

In some cases, the homes are so big that they have their own gates like former baseball player Ken Griffey Jr.'s sprawling 22,000-square-foot lakefront mansion with seven and a half bathrooms and a full basketball court.

West Windermere has become more Fresh Prince of Bel-Air than Green Acres.

Technically, though, the enclave nestled around the Butler Chain of Lakes is classified by Orange County as rural.

And that has buoyed residents' opposition to the School Board's plans to build a new high school there.

Some people in the county's 21 other rural settlements have joined the fight against the school.

They see the controversy, which is now headed to court after the Board of County Commissioners and School Board couldn't reach a deal, as a sign of their future.

"You give a little ... give a little ... all the sudden where does that little end up?" asked Suzanne Arnold, a member of the Lake Mary Jane Alliance, which was formed as a watchdog over development in the Lake Mary Jane Rural Settlement.

She doesn't want what happened to West Windermere to happen to Lake Mary Jane.

While some parts of West Windermere still have a rural feel, much of it looks like upscale suburbia.

There's already a private school there as well as an approved, but not-yet-built, shopping center. The settlement is bordered by Sate Road 535, which widens to a six-lane highway at some points.

If the County Commission cared about preserving West Windermere's rural character, perhaps it wouldn't have approved some of those changes.

That's why when folks in those gated neighborhoods argue that the high school will ruin the feel of their "rural" area, it seems more like a case of NIMBY-ism than rural preservation.

But this is just a taste of what's to come for Orange County. All of its rural settlements are feeling more and more pressure. And for some, it's not too late.

Yellow Dog Eats, a favorite lunch stop among locals, sits on Gotha's main drag in an old building with a tin roof. Next door, a beauty shop looks like an old Cracker-style home.

But across the street is a large Mediterranean-style home with a tile roof and columns. Another example of Orange County allowing new suburbia to creep into a settlement.

Other places have remarkably remained mostly untouched.

Lake Mary Jane in east Orange County is probably the area that has most retained its rural feel — for now.

"One of the things I absolutely loved about it is the lack of light," said Wendy Vomacka, an attorney who has lived in Lake Mary Jane since 1990. "We have a gorgeous starlit sky."

There's a sense of peace, she said, that you can't find in the more developed areas.

"You get to a certain point on Moss Park Road and the temperature would drop because there's more land and less pavement," she said. "I could physically tell the difference getting out of the city to the country."

Lake Mary Jane Road is narrow. Some people have barns with horses or cattle. At least one has llamas. A sign at one driveway advertises fresh brown eggs for sale.

Preserving places like Lake Mary Jane is going to become harder.

Orange County is expected to lead the state's growth during the next 30 years. University of Florida projects 670,000 new people in Orange based on the 2010 Census.

Lake Mary Jane lost its little country store about a decade ago when a Publix opened on Moss Park Road.

People who live in the 560-home community still lament the store's closing like the loss of an old friend.

"We had a community bulletin board, and you could stop in and rent a movie on a Friday night," Vomacka said. "People would gravitate there."